Does WoW have a faster pace than FFXIV?

[SaberMaxwell]

At OP specifically, Monk is a burning trashfire of a job one of (if not the) highest APM jobs in FFXIV. You might not be saying that the game feels so fast paced if you were playing a Caster (not saying that the role doesn't come with its own difficulties) or a tank or a healer.

I'm not an expert on WoW raiding, and obviously through this thread you'll read that there are people who have their own opinions on which raiding is "more difficult" or "better." I'm also biased, having completed all three Ultimate raids out to this point. So I will not and cannot answer either of those questions or indeed, whether XIV is faster than WoW or not. I can only communicate what I observe in and enjoy in XIV's raiding, and maybe that will help with any conclusions you'd like to draw.

From my experience, FFXIV's raid scene is scripted, but the challenge is fitting your job's rotation as optimally to that script as you can. Titan Savage will always Stonecrusher a few GCDs into the fight, and then move into Evil Earth 1, but how you and your team handle Evil Earth 1 and how you yourself fit your rotation into the mechanic itself are important.

Personally speaking, I enjoy the little optimizations you can make in challenging the mechanic: my static got to the point in E2S, for instance, where we all more or less stood max melee of the boss during every single flare. In E3S, we make a horseshoe around Leviathan when he drops the puddles before doing his double temporary current, leaving just enough space to stand between the puddle's death zone and the current's safe zone.

We knew the mechanics, we knew when they'd come and how much damage they would do. So instead of mindlessly doing the same dance week after week, we kept asking "Okay but how can we disrespect this more so our people can do even more damage?" However, I've played almost exclusively in my static; I understand that in pugs, you play as exactly to-the-script as you can, and it's a different atmosphere altogether.

Fights like Ultimate make it an endurance test on top of the script; you need to adhere perfectly to the script for 18 minutes straight in TEA, for instance, or you'll wipe the whole raid with any chance of recovering the run being low even if you have a Red Mage. It's not for everybody, of course; it's a boss rush type of mode that takes the combat system of Shadowbringers and pushes it to the boundaries and thus, any good or ill that is inherent in the combat system will likewise be brought with as well.

[tdb]

No.. you're not. You're not reacting to anything. A reaction means something has occurred against you and you are taking an action to actively avoid it. A scripted encounter means that you move from position A towards position B not because something has occurred to force you to move/react; but because you saw the boss take a completely separate action, but that action precedes the ability that would need to be avoided, and so you preemptively take action to negate what will follow in the bosses ability procession.

You may know that you need to move at a specific time, but you won't always know exactly where to move. Maybe the boss places a delayed AoE on a random player, or it fires a wide beam in a random direction. You know the attack is coming, but you still have to watch the boss to know where it's coming and react accordingly. Some examples:
- Sophia ex's duplicated attack mechanic - it's not scripted which clone you have to move under, or which attack she does (although being close and just behind avoids both)
- Midgardsormr's spin/roll attacks in O10. You have to watch what he does to know whether you need to move close, far, to sides or to corners.
- Midgardsormr's flame breath mechanic just after the add phase. The order in which players are targeted is random.
- Omega's starboard/larboard mechanic in O11. The boss flipping around between the two attacks makes it even more difficult to get straight.
- Several boss mechanics in the Copied Factory. All bosses have mechanics where the targeting of an attack is randomized and you can't just move to a fixed place at a fixed time.

And let's not forget the perhaps most important source of randomness: other players. You can never predict exactly what they do, and it has a significant effect on where the attacks are aimed. Only raiding with a static alleviates this to an extent since you get to know each other and can do more planning beforehand, but there are still factors like someone being drunk or tired which may make them forget or react sluggishly and then others will have to adapt.

Also, even if many of FFXIV's fights are loosely choreographed dances, they're incredibly complex dances. Some people (me included) get satisfaction from mastering such a dance. It's kind of like playing an instrument (piano in my case) - a particular song is always the same, but it still feels good when you can move your fingers in precisely the right way for several minutes without making a mistake. If that's not your thing, that's fine, but it doesn't make FFXIV an objectively worse game.

[Omymy]

Wow combat and class design in majority is hot garbage, if you do anything else than rushing through dungeon you could play it with one hand.

Said by someone who doesn't even know how to make Windwalker monk opener.

Are you saying that while playing this game, i mean, you cant even lose aggro because the devs wanted to make it terribly casual. CCs are a joke, luckly you use one. Try to beat mythic+ and stop talking nonsense, please, make yourself a favor.

[frostmagemari]

Also, even if many of FFXIV's fights are loosely choreographed dances, they're incredibly complex dances. Some people (me included) get satisfaction from mastering such a dance. It's kind of like playing an instrument (piano in my case) - a particular song is always the same, but it still feels good when you can move your fingers in precisely the right way for several minutes without making a mistake. If that's not your thing, that's fine, but it doesn't make FFXIV an objectively worse game.

I'm sorry, where did i say that XIV was a worse game? The OP asked about the pace of the game vs WoW, and the scripted to the second fights is what slows down it's pacing by a staggering amount. If you can prepare and in most cases plan ahead because you're following a script, it has a slower pace than a game that does not give you that luxury.

Being critical of a game's systems in comparison to other games does not mean i have the belief that one is worse; but i don't need to extol every facet of the game to enjoy it.

[Nedkel]

I'm sorry, where did i say that XIV was a worse game? The OP asked about the pace of the game vs WoW, and the scripted to the second fights is what slows down it's pacing by a staggering amount. If you can prepare and in most cases plan ahead because you're following a script, it has a slower pace than a game that does not give you that luxury.

Being critical of a game's systems in comparison to other games does not mean i have the belief that one is worse; but i don't need to extol every facet of the game to enjoy it.

No, OP said FFXIV combat is faster because it contains more mechanics in the design comparing to wow in which you just spam abilities.

[frostmagemari]

No, OP said FFXIV combat is faster because it contains more mechanics in the design comparing to wow in which you just spam abilities.

You didn't read the OP at all then, did you?

I've heard that, due to the higher global cooldown, FFXIV feels slower for some people. However, I've played both FFXIV and WoW, and I find, barring the obviously faster classes, the gameplay generally feels faster in FFXIV. I'm not 100% sure why FFXIV feels faster, but if I had to guess I would assume it's the movement. I find this game has you dodging AOEs and boss mechanics more often, not to mention positionals. I just fought Storge with the Monk, and that was one of the more hectic fights I've experienced. Dodging it's AOEs while landing your positionals, and trying not to trip up your combo (that may just be me, as I don't know the rotation) took not a small amount of focus. At any rate, what do you guys think? Is WoW faster paced or FFXIV, and why?

He specifically makes mentions to combat flow of the fights, and in his opinion, XIV's combat is faster paced; even though it is scripted. And i was saying that it is not faster paced. The pace of the fight slows down because there is nothing unforeseen happening. You already know to prepare to dodge something after boss uses X move. You already know to avoid the edges of the arena after Y move. You already know to prepare a defensive because the tank-buster happens at X points in the fight. You don't need to actually watch the fight much at all, you just need to know that X will happen and only worry about that next.

Hell, we had a post by SaberMaxwell that said "We knew the mechanics, we knew when they'd come and how much damage they would do" and that they had to start inventing ways to make the fights more interesting for them; in a game that has a fast paced combat/boss system, you don't get those luxuries.

[tdb]

I'm sorry, where did i say that XIV was a worse game? The OP asked about the pace of the game vs WoW, and the scripted to the second fights is what slows down it's pacing by a staggering amount. If you can prepare and in most cases plan ahead because you're following a script, it has a slower pace than a game that does not give you that luxury.

Being critical of a game's systems in comparison to other games does not mean i have the belief that one is worse; but i don't need to extol every facet of the game to enjoy it.

Apologies if I inferred too much from your posts. I might have also confused you with someone else in the preceding discussion. I got a general vibe of "FFXIV's boss fights are highly scripted and you need no actual skills to perform the dance" (not necessarily from your posts, just from the discussion in general). Not that less skills needed necessarily equates worse either.

[Yamr3]

The rotation and amount of skills differences is huge and plays the main part of the ffxiv combat advantages. Its somthing that you cant ignore if in ffxiv you are pressing like 16 different buttons and in wow you do like 8.
Wow combat and class design in majority is hot garbage, if you do anything else than rushing through dungeon you could play it with one hand.
It is faster but its not surprising since GCD is sitting at 1 sec so all specs should have over 60 apm which is not the case and a ton of them is sitting way below that. In ffxiv despite gcd being 2.5 sec jobs do 31+ apm the least.

Good morning,

I am commenting here to show that it is quite far higher than that if you look at players who are above average. I've taken 2 logs to show the CPM. The first log below is form one of the top 100 guilds in the world. Please see below for the CPM from this top 100 guild. A third of the raiders CPM for first boss on Mythic The Eternal Palace are double the CPM, 2 almost triple, the actions per minute possible for FF14.




Now let's look at a more laid back guild. I will use mine for example. We're a hybrid guild and community of raiders. More so on the super casual side of raiding until we get to the half way point of Heroic difficulty of raids, as that's when things start to get real.




I post this to show that's it's not actually that far down on CPM. It's quite accurately double, and as shown here can be tripled, with the actions per minute. When you look at casual players and see the comparison it's not too vastly down either.

I picked the first boss because that's one you sit around and don't have to move too much. Kind of like how E2S is besides standing in a puddle every now and then or the tank / healer running to their A / C marker for flares.

[Cetonis]

A third of the raiders CPM for first boss on Mythic The Eternal Palace are double the CPM, 2 almost triple, the actions per minute possible for FF14.

Just a factual correction, FFXIV CPM tends to run from 30-50, with most jobs between 35-45. So there's definitely no triple, a couple near-doubles, and then a lot of just "more". So still faster as a CPM measure, just not by as insane of a degree as stated.

Digging a bit more fwiw, looking over some of these logs I'd say that ~90% of the players over 60 cpm are spamming 3-5 skills for the bulk (~80% or more) of those actions. The other 20% can involve a myriad of different skills though.

[Yamr3]

Just a factual correction, FFXIV CPM tends to run from 30-50, with most jobs between 35-45. So there's definitely no triple, a couple near-doubles, and then a lot of just "more". So still faster as a CPM measure, just not by as insane of a degree as stated.

Digging a bit more fwiw, looking over some of these logs I'd say that ~90% of the players over 60 cpm are spamming 3-5 skills for the bulk (~80% or more) of those actions. The other 20% can involve a myriad of different skills though.

Since a recurring subtopic is button presses, let's look into it a little more. I decided to match the Shadow Priest casts with one of the top DPS for E2S. They're a Bard, so it's range and range. To prevent naming and shaming I will not quote the player's name but you can verify yourselves by looking through FFlogs.

This image here shows the Shadow Priest from the first boss in Mythic The Eternal Palace


This image below shows one of the bard I'm using as an example from E2S.


Both of those are range classes and not really a unique rotation to say. Not a vast difference until we look at time. In the Priest's log, they used 263 actions in 3 minutes vs. the bard using 396 in 9 minutes on E2S. If we took the same pacing of 263 buttons every 3 minutes while tripling the same boss's HP, the Priest would've done 789 buttons in 9 minutes. Which would match the Bard's kill time on E2S.

Both fights relatively don't have players moving very much besides a mechanic here and there requiring you to stack on someone moving the AoE out or standing on your soak marker in E2S and dodging the combo in the last phase.

If we look at this, the Priest was doing 90.5 CPM and the Bard is doing 46.6. We could go into the nitty gritty of which classes are spam classes but I believe that is a different category of issues, balance and game design over time. Neither side are wrong to play, which we all can agree on; however, for the above average player, WoW is considerably faster in CPM to FF14's CPM, even if it's 2 extra buttons. Which, CPM aside and only looking at rotations, is a personal flavor difference for each player themselves.